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0:01
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Hi. Welcome to Digging for Truth, presented by Associates for Biblical Research. I'm your host, Henry Smith. Today, I'm very happy to have Dr. Gary Byers, archaeologist with ABR, back on the program, to talk about the Amarna letters and their relationship to the exodus from Egypt and the conquest of Canaan by Joshua. Gary, welcome back to Digging for Truth. Good to have you on, man. >> Hey, buddy. It's good to see you again. Thanks. >> Hey, it's good to see you.
0:54
Now, all the way from New Mexico, we are gonna have a conversation over two episodes over really one of the most important discoveries in archeology and its relationship to the exodus conquest narratives. And that is the Amarna letters, Gary. Perhaps we could start at the beginning. What's the big picture here? What are the Amarna letters? Well yeah. Henry, this is a subject that's really special to me because, as you said, it really is important.
1:31
I want to talk today about the Tell El-Amarna letters and their relationship with the Israelite exodus from Egypt and the Israelite conquest of Canaan. And I think the letters just set us up so nicely to appreciate what the Bible says. So these two episodes, I'm gonna try to make that case for you, and we'll see how we do. Well, Tell El-Amarna is the modern name of a site in Egypt. It's halfway between -- basically halfway between Memphis at the south end of the Delta, and Thebes,
2:09
way down in the southern end of the Nile River. So it's right about in between the two. It did not exist until Pharaoh Amenhotep IV. He's the guy that we know as Akhenaten. In fact, Henry, I sort of abbreviate these guys. So Amenhotep IV, I just call him A4. So sometimes I'll say A4. If I say A3 -- If I say T1, that means Thutmose I. So I'll try to keep it right, but you know how I roll. So we'll see what happens here. So Amenhotep IV, the son of Amenhotep III, he moves the capital,
2:54
the religious and the political center of Egypt, from Thebes, halfway to Memphis and a brand-new site. And he calls it Akhenaten, which means "the horizon of Aten," and Aten was the sun god, the sun disk god. He was like Amun-Re, who was also the sun god. But Aten was a little different, and I don't even understand all the ramifications of that. But he changed, he refocused Egyptian religion, moved out of the Egyptian capital's religious and spiritual capitals of the country,
3:36
started something all brand-new at a place he called Akhenaten, meaning "the horizon of Aten." It functioned as Egypt's capital for only 30 years. It was built as part of his revolution. He never got the full city plan done, and his -- we believe, correctly understood -- his son Tutankhamun, whose original birth name was Tutankhaten, Tutankhamun, finally, in his first year of his reign -- we think is about the first year -- very quickly after he became pharaoh --
4:12
Of course, he's only 9, 10 years old -- but he moved back to Thebes and abandoned Amarna. And the world got back -- The Egyptian world got back to what it used to be. So the Amarna tablets are something, they're just sort of an anomaly in ancient Egypt, but an anomaly that later Egyptians hated. And they actually tried to erase the memory of A4, Akhenaten, because he was the scourge of Egypt's politics and religion. So here's just a little map. It's in red there on the right-hand side.
4:54
Tell El-Amarna, Akhenaten, halfway between Memphis and Thebes. And then there's a picture of a close-up of more of the city. And in that area, there's a particular area, the center of the city, central city, is where they found the Tell El-Amarna letters. In fact, the particular find spot -- Of all the letters, Henry, there were 382 Tell El-Amarna tablets that were found -- 382 -- only 25 of them were found by archaeologists. All the others were found by local Egyptians digging for stuff.
5:38
They were just digging for fertilizer for the garden. And they found these tablets, and somebody realized they probably meant something more than fertilizer. And they wound up being sold on the antiquities market. And after that, archaeologists found out about it, went to dig to find them, went to the areas that they understood were the areas of the tablets, and they only found like 25. So all of these tablets were simply sold in the antiquities market,
6:11
and archaeologists have very little information. But the place that they did dig and find a little bit was called, on an inscription, "the place of the letters of Pharaoh." Three-hundred and eight-two total tablets, but 32 of them were literary works, basically scribal training tools, including some upscale Akkadian myths and epics. So 350 of these were letters to and from Egypt, and they reflect what we call the cuneiform culture of the late Bronze Age in the ancient Near East.
6:51
Now, what does that mean? Well, the cuneiform culture was the clay-tablet international connection that one kingdom had with another. And they were writing in the Akkadian script -- Akkadian language and the cuneiform script. And "cuneiform" is simply a Latin word for "wedge shape." So their script was not Egyptian hieroglyphics. It was not yet alphabetic script. It was these wedge-shaped letters that were famous in Mesopotamia. So it was the Akkadian language or various dialects of it,
7:32
based on your ability to write good Akkadian. So it was the Akkadian language in cuneiform script, 382 total tablets, many of them broken. But 350 were political letters. There were some of the tablets that were found already fired, but that was probably by accident. They didn't fire them on purpose, most likely, but some were found that way. By the way, museums today, when museums get clay tablets, one of the first things they do is fire them so they can keep their present form,
8:08
and then they can try to do other things with them to help preserve them. But they start off by firing them. But most of these were not, so they were -- What's that? >> I didn't know that. >> Yeah. So, Harvard -- Yale. [ Chuckles ] I think it was Yale. Yale had a basement full of tablets. In fact, they have told us that there are so many tablets, there are way more tablets in the basements of museums that not been translated, that we will probably never get to them all.
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AI might help in the near future, but at this point, it's impossible for them all be to be read. >> Right. >> So Yale actually sold us a bunch of tablets at our museum, and immediately we got them fired, and then we put them on display. >> Fantastic. >> Yeah. It's an interesting deal. >> All right. Hey. So, Gary, we have to go to a break. I'm sorry to cut you short there, but we are gonna go to a break real quick, and I want you to pick it up right after this message.
9:33
>> Hi. Welcome back to Digging for Truth. I'm your host, Henry Smith. I'm here with Gary Byers, archaeologist. We're talking about the Amarna letters. Okay, Gary. We went to a break last time. We were just talking a little bit about the firing of tablets. I'd like you to complete the thought on that and then tell us about the overarching message that are in them. >> Okay. Well, these tablets are roughly two inches to eight inches. Some of them are very, very small -- 2x2, 2x1.
10:03
Others can go 8x5, 8x6 inches. And they are the messages between the kings of the ancient world dealing with Egypt as well as the vassals of Egypt in the southern and northern Levant. And so all of those letters deal with that. The big important letters came from the kings of Babylon, Assyria, Mitanni, Arzawa, Alashiya, which is Cyprus, and Hatti -- the Hittites. And then there were letters from northern Canaan and southern Canaan. And most of the letters are those. Now remember
10:44
these are 382 letters -- tablets that we found. Imagine how many were there before. We've only got just a slight glimpse. So this is just a picture of the possibilities of the ancient ancient world that Egypt knew and was dealing with. So I do have a map up here just to show you the kingdoms, just to get a sense of it. The letters are put in order. They start with letters from Babylon in the bottom right, the green, then from Mitanni, the purple. Then the letters go to -- let's see -- Arzawa,
11:27
out where Ephesus is, in western Turkey. And then it goes to Alashiya, which is Cyprus, and then Hatti. So those are the kings and the kingdoms that wrote letters to Egypt. And you can see that the Egyptian kingdom goes all the way up and down the Nile, all the way up to near the Euphrates River. And this is where Egypt got into a beef with Mitanni and got into beef with Hatti, the Hittites. And that's the world of the Amarna letters. Now, I have a list here of the 18th-dynasty pharaohs.
12:13
There's 14 pharaohs in the 18th dynasty. Just real quickly -- First off, the the founder was a guy named Ahmose. And it was his family line, his dynasty, that was gonna go all the way down through King Tut. And Ahmose was the guy who drove the Hyksos out of Egypt. Hyksos were Semitic peoples living in the delta. And they moved in over hundreds of years due to famine in their land, looking better opportunities -- you know, "Let's go to Egypt." "Let's go to America and start a new life."
12:52
And so they did. And eventually, it didn't seem to be a real revolution. Just kind of got in positions of power and one day just took over the delta, southern Egypt. And they lasted for 150 years. Well, Ahmose was a native Egyptian from the south, in Thebes. And he led a fight against them, actually ran them out of Egypt. They went back to Canaan, Syria, and he chased them back that way. So he was the founder of the 18th dynasty, and he's the guy that sets up the empire for Egypt.
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And you see the name Amenhotep. I call him A1. And then Thutmose is the first -- T1. So these are the guys and one gal, Hatshepsut, who were the line of of Ahmose, who built the empire, the greatest empire that Egypt had ever known. They built the greatest empire the world had known up until that time. And I'll just point out, the last two pharaohs of the 18th dynasty were not royals. Tutankhamun was the last one. They were political leaders under the last three pharaohs, and they took over.
14:12
Probably shouldn't be considered the 18th dynasty, but they are. So this is Egypt's empire period. In fact, Pharaohs Thutmose I, III, and Amenhotep II all claimed to have conquered the Levant up to the Euphrates River. All claimed to have put monuments at the Euphrates River, saying, you know, "I was here. This is Egyptian territory." And so during this empire period of the 18th dynasty, Egypt's empire stretched from the Nile's third, fourth cataract -- that's ancient Nubia, modern Sudan --
14:49
all the way up to the Euphrates River. It was massive, it was powerful, it was rich, and it was strong. But sadly, by the reign of Amenhotep III -- and I'll go back to that list again in a minute -- but by the reign of Amenhotep III, seeds of disintegration in the eastern empire can be seen. All these local rulers in that region, they were under his authority. And the Akkadian word in the text, in all the tablets, is "hazannu." And their letters all kept saying one of two things.
15:33
Either they were vying for Pharaoh's attention or they were attempting to take over somebody else's land and people were complaining about it. That's almost every Amarna letter from the southern and northern Levant. That's almost what every one was about. Egyptian officials were crossing the Levant but seemed to be of minimal value according to the letters. They didn't seem to help the local rulers out very much, and they didn't seem to be invested in Pharaoh's interest in the region.
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Most of the letters were written to and from Amenhotep III and his son Amenhotep IV, or Akhenaten. And I'll just tell you this. The bad boys of the Amarna letters were all over the region causing havoc, and they were called -- The Akkadian term was "habiru." The Egyptian term is "apiru." And you can hear the similarity between the two. So that's who was a big problem in the Amarna letters. And you may have a sense that that's going to tie into the Bible really good.
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>> Yeah. >> So here's this real quick -- Yes. >> So what we'll do, Gary -- So we have the habiru -- or the apiru -- depending on how you pronounce it -- and they're causing all kinds of trouble. Now we're gonna focus, in our next segment, on particular letters from Canaan, right? You're talking broadly about the whole scope of the letters. We're gonna focus on that and you're gonna give the audience some of that when we come back right after this break.
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>> Hi. Welcome back to Digging for Truth. We're here with Dr. Gary Byers, archaeologist, talking about the Amarna letters. Well, Gary, you've given us a tour de force so far. Give us just a little taste of -- What you're gonna do is connect this to the bigger picture of the story of the Bible. But a little bit about some of what's in these letters from the ones that are from Canaan, because you already mentioned the apiru or the habiru -- It's the same word, essentially. >> Yeah.
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>> Just give us a little flavor of that. >> Well, these are the -- I refer to them as the bad boys of the Amarna letters. They're the ones that everybody's complaining about. Although we also read in the letters that some of these Canaanite kings, these Levantine kings, are working with them. The habiru are even their mercenaries. So there is absolute chaos in the Levant with these guys. And that's what the Amarna letters are all about. Now, I'm gonna make the case
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that this time in Egypt's history -- It's the time period after the biblical plagues and exodus, and I'm gonna make the case -- and I'm gonna put it on screen here. I'm gonna suggest that there are nine predictable outcomes on Egypt from the biblical plagues to the exodus. And I'm gonna say that what we're seeing in the Amarna letters is a natural result in Egypt's eastern empire of those very events. So real quickly -- Egypt's breadbasket was the Nile delta.
19:26
The Bible says it was severely impacted by the 10 plagues. That would have had an incredible economic impact on all of Egypt. The exodus also led to the loss of a large labor force in the delta region. Now, it would not have affected, and I don't think there were any, Israelites in Thebes, way down south. They were living in the delta. But the Israelites living in the delta, they would have been a huge part of the labor force. As the Bible says, they're gone.
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The departing Israelites also plundered the Egyptian population in the delta. They just went and asked -- God told him to do it, and He said, "I'll have them ready." And the Egyptians gave them gold and silver and clothing -- cloth -- which is all gonna be important when the Israelites get in the wilderness and start building the tabernacle. The death of the firstborn in every Egyptian home was gonna bring great disruption. That's the 10th plague. Henry, I'll just throw out the thought.
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I checked it again this week. You know, the firstborn in every Egyptian home, It could mean every firstborn in the family, whether it was grandfather who was the firstborn, dad who was the firstborn or his kid who was the firstborn. It could have been incredibly disruptive. Then I'm gonna suggest that Egypt's "Delta Force," their northern army of Amun-Re, was devastated by the Red Sea crossing event. Now, there was an Egyptian army in Thebes to deal with Kush --Nubia.
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But this was the Delta Force, the Egyptians' Delta Force up on the delta, that was going into Canaan all the time. That's what Thutmose I and III and Amenhotep II, that's what they used when they went in. That force would have been devastated. Now, the text is real clear -- the Bible is real clear -- that the chariots, his 600 best, plus all the other ones he could get ahold of, they all went down in the sea. It isn't clear to me if there were foot soldiers in there with them as well.
21:49
The Bible isn't really clear on that. But anyway, their Delta Force was really devastated. The prestige of Egyptian gods were greatly diminished. They were helpless in the face of what the Lord God of Israel did. And that was gonna lead to Akhenaten, Amenhotep IV, creating a new religion with a new capital in a new kingdom. I'm also going to suggest the possibility that the reigning pharaoh died. I'm not convinced that the biblical text says it, but maybe it does.
22:24
I don't care one way or the other. But clearly the 18th dynasty collapses at the end of this period and Egypt loses its eastern empire. The plagues and the exodus of Egypt devastated the nation. But if you just read Egyptian history, just read what went on in Egypt with the pharaohs, you'd actually never really see it, because the pharaohs just continued to build big buildings and act like everything's fine, nothing's wrong. And so I think if you're going to see the downturn of Egypt
23:05
and the collapse of the 18th dynasty, the best place to look is with the eastern empires. And so that's the region where these local rulers are crying for help. It's the region where Pharaoh either cannot or would not -- and I think he can't. I don't think he's got an army up there in the north to send. I don't think they've got the resources to send them. I think the nation is in chaos, but he keeps building big buildings, because as the Egyptian kings -- excuse me --
23:39
as the other kings in the ancient Near East wrote in letters and said, "We hear that gold is as dust is in Egypt. Send me gold." And this was all related to "I'm gonna give you my daughter. So you send me gold, and I'm gonna send you things from my place." "You send me gold --" Egypt was still filthy rich and still collecting, I would imagine, from Nubia, more and more gold. And so pharaohs keep acting as if -- Well, they were fiddling as Rome burned, as Nero did.
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>> [ Laughs ] Gary, that's fantastic. I love the connection that you've made here, because the Egyptians are not gonna admit it, but the truth springs from the earth. And you're thinking that in these letters, their loss of control in Canaan is exactly what we're seeing in the post-exodus period. What we're gonna do, Gary, is, we are gonna go to a break real quick, and I want you to pick it up right after this message.
25:10
>> Hi. Welcome back to Digging for Truth. I'm your host, Henry Smith. I'm here with Gary Byers, archaeologist. We're talking about the Amarna letters.
25:18
We kind of left off with the idea of, uh, the impact that the plagues of Egypt would have had on Egypt and really eroding their ability to keep control over their colonies of, particularly Canaan. Uh, give us just a little overview of what you shared with that as we connect people up to the first episode. >> Well, during the 18th dynasty, the pharaohs went all the way up to the Euphrates River, which is the northeast edge of the Northern Levant.
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And they control that area. They controlled the ports, certainly, they controlled the major roadways, certainly. And they had up to 25 different rulers, uh, ruling little empires, not empire, little kingdoms, uh, throughout the Northern and Southern Levant. These were the guys charged by Pharaoh to control all that region in his name. And if they didn't do it well, he'd be calling 'em to Egypt. And it wouldn't be a pretty scene. So they had to do it right. And they're complaining.
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They're sending letters to him saying, "Pharaoh, things are awful. I need your help. Why aren't you responding and sending me the 25 archers that I asked for? Just 25 archers. That's all I need." And, uh, they never seem to show up. >> And so we could theorize a couple of reasons why. And I think your theory here is maybe the Pharaoh is indifferent. Maybe he didn't care. Maybe he couldn't. And the reason he couldn't seems to be, if you look at the Bible's story,
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there's a really logical connection there. >> Yeah, yeah. And, you know, most Egyptologists don't believe there was a biblical Exodus, so they don't even -- it's not even on their radar screen. So we have to inject this with a whole new source that they've never used, considered, thought about. And I think it fits nicely. >> Okay. So in those letters, uh, would you like to share some of the things that you see in them or really take us any direction you want to as far as, uh,
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as the next step in our talk? >> Okay. Well, I'm going to -- I want to make the case with you this episode that where the Israelites fit into the Amarna letters particularly. So we'll take a run at it. All right. So I've got, on the screen, I've got, uh, a slide with the land of Canaan, the Promised Land. Now, the first verse is Genesis 10, and that talks about the extent of the Promised Land. And I'll just have you have you note that it's up north,
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and the extent of the land of Canaan, not the Promised Land -- I think I said -- that the northern border of Canaan was where Sidon is on the Mediterranean coast, and you basically go from there due east. Then, beginning in Genesis 15, all the rest of the verses are about God's Promised Land to the Israelites. And if you'll notice, it goes way beyond Sidon. Um, Genesis 15, it's to the Euphrates. Exodus 23, it doesn't use the word Euphrates,
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but the river, which is usually understood to be Euphrates. Um, Numbers 13, to Lebo Hamath, which is not quite as far as the Euphrates, but close. Numbers 34, Lebo Hamath. Deuteronomy 1, the Euphrates. Deuteronomy 11, the Euphrates. Joshua 1, the Euphrates. And Joshua 13, it goes -- refers to Sidon and Byblos and all of Lebanon and Mount Hermon, that area which they had not yet conquered as of Joshua 13. So this gives us a sense of what the original promise was, and gives us a sense
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of what the Israelites actually got around to doing. So here's a standard map. This was from Bible History Online. It's pretty standardized about where the 12 tribes were located. And I'm interested in just what's up north. And you can see that, uh, the tribe of Asher on the coast, um, was supposed to have Tyre, but the Bible says they never took it. And nobody, nobody got the region of Sidon. And so, uh, in the north, it goes from around Tyre to the to the city of Dan
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and never touches Damascus. That is the high point of the Israelite occupation of Canaan by the end of the Book of Joshua and the Book of Judges, Here's another look, another map. And I'm sorry that my graphics department wasn't available to do all this, so I just picked the best stuff I could find. So the Promised Land is in green, goes way up north. What was actually taken by the Israelites is in red, and it's a huge difference. God promised them so much more than what
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the Book of Joshua and Judges says. Now, when we get to Samuel and Kings, we actually see that David and Solomon did get that far for a minute. But then, of course, the kingdom divided after that, and it was all gone. But they did eventually get up there. But as far as Joshua and Judges, they did not get there in that time. So, um, so -- so now that's what the Bible says, now we got these bad boys of the Amarna letters running all over the region,
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and we've got the Israelites, the Hebrews in the same region. Let's see what kind of connection we can make. So here's my slide. The bad boys of the Amarna letters. They're mentioned in two different ways. One, "SA.GAZ," which was in the Amarna letters in the Sumerian language. That was one of the early, early, early languages. >> Right. >> Out of that later would come the word "Habiru" in the Akkadian language. Now, most of the references in the Amarna letters,
31:49
believe it or not, are the SA.GAZ, but most translators simply call that -- um, simply refer to them as the Habiru. Um, and then the Egyptian language uses the word "Apiru," and you can see Apiru, Habiru, B and P. In fact, in Arabic, they cannot pronounce a P, so they, in Arabic, it's baba instead of papa, and they eat bizza instead of pizza. So the B and the P in that part of the world are just similar letters. >> Sure. >> Uh, these guys, the Habiru,
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are mentioned in ancient texts all over the ancient Near East from the 19th to the 13th century, way before and even after the Amarna tablets. They are mentioned with no sense of a common ethnicity, same family line, or common language. They typically live outside the normal urban society. They're not part of the regular society. And in the Amarna letters, they are certainly not loyal to Pharaoh. So I'm going to make the case to you that, in Canaan, not the Northern Levant, but Canaan, you know,
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the 12 tribes, in the region of the Canaan, the bad boys of the Amarna letters were related to the good guys in the Bible. >> All right, well, we're going to take a break and we're going to let you continue making that case right after this message.
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>> Hi. Welcome back to "Digging for Truth." We're exploring the question of the Amarna letters, particularly now. Who are the Habiru or Apiru? Okay Gary uh we've been leading the audience here for an episode and a half almost on this question of the Abiru. Right? Right? Okay. So now you kind of said, basically, these are brigands, marauders, vandals, you might use that word. They're not tied to a particular country. Um, you know. Fascinating. So tell us more and connect the dots.
34:26
>> Okay, here we go. So the Habiru in the Amarna letters -- I've got this slide I'm going to put up for you because it's a little bit technical. Uh, there's just a little bit of stuff to remember. So here we go. Habiru in the Amarna letters. There are 123 total mentions of the Habiru, either the word SA.GAZ, uh, Sumerian, or the Akkadian Habiru. There are 123 total mention of these guys in 61 of the 350 letters. Now break that down a little bit. Rib-Hadda of Byblos wrote, uh, 60 letters.
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60 of the 350 are from this one guy, and he mentions in his 60 letters, He mentions SA.GAZ 46 times in 28 of those letters. Then there's another guy, Mayarzana of Hasi. He's up in the Beqaa Valley near Byblos. By the way, both of those are areas that the Bible is clear the Israelites didn't get to. And they mention the Amarna letters. He mentions, in his two letters, he mentions them 33 times. He's really ticked at his Habiru. Okay. So we subtract those, so 123 total.
35:47
That means there's 44 more mentions in 31 of the rest of the 350 letters. Now we're going to zero in. 25 of these 44 SA.GAZ, Habiru mentions are clearly in the Southern Levant. That would be from the line from Sidon on the coast through to Mount Hermon, to Damascus on the east. So in that region, the region the Bible says Israelites took control of in Joshua and Judges, 25 for sure references to the Habiru SA.GAZ guys in the Southern Levant.
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It's the same region at the same time the Israelites -- and of course, also, they're known as Hebrews -- were settling in Canaan. Same place, same time, uh, these folks. So I would say one out of five, at least, references to the Habiru in the Amarna letters are none other than our Hebrews or Israelites in the region of Canaan. Just a little bit more. The Akkadian Habiru and biblical Hebrews -- those two words -- one in Hebrew, one in Akkadian, are linguistically compatible terms.
37:11
Scholars argue about it, but the fact is they are compatible. All Habiru in the Amarna letters would not be understood as being Hebrews or Israelites. But what would a Canaanite ruler call a Hebrew, an Israelite invader? They may even have heard the word Hebrew, and it sounded like Habiru to them, and they certainly knew who Habiru were. And so when the Israelites showed up, the Canaanite rulers just called them Habiru. So all -- But I would say all Habiru would not be Hebrews,
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but all Hebrew Israelites in the Amarna letters should probably be best understood as the Habiru. In the Southern Levant, Canaan, in the Amarna letters, they discussed the same region in the same time as the biblical period Hebrew-Israelite conquest and settlement. So I would say 20% of the references to Habiru in the Amarna letters are likely the Hebrews in the region of Canaan. >> So, Gary. So, we have we have about two minutes in this segment. I want to ask you a quick question.
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Um, some of the places that are mentioned, um, in the letters, um, are they consistent with what the Bible records about -- Because the Israelites come into the hill country, right? >> Yes. They focus there. >> So maybe just give us a little bit about that and then we'll talk more in the next segment. >> All right. Well, Hazor mentioned in both, Megiddo is mentioned in both, and they were -- they were part of the northern campaign that Joshua took out, those cities and kingdoms up there.
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Of course, the southern campaign dealt with this Jericho and Ai, the city of Ai, and references Shechem. Jericho is not mentioned in the Amarna letters, although it was no doubt up and running. In fact, there's a cuneiform tablet in Jericho that's not one of the Amarna texts, but it was part of that world, that cuneiform culture. Jerusalem is mentioned extensively. Jerusalem was not taken in Joshua's day. It was taken in the Book of Judges. So, and then most of the southern campaign,
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Joshua defeated armies, but he didn't capture cities. And so I think what we see in the Bible is very consistent with what we see in the Amarna letters in the land of Canaan. >> Excellent. Well, we're going to go to a break, Gary, and then we're going to come back for our final segment, and we'll pick up those thoughts after this break.
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>> Hi. Welcome back to "Digging for Truth." We're exploring the Amarna letters with Doctor Gary Byers, archaeologist with ABR. Gary, so, okay, we've been through a lot of material here, right? I think it would be a good time to do a summary and then, after we summary, we'll have a little bit more discussion as we wind up the show here in our last segment. So, give us a sort of a big picture overview for somebody trying to synthesize all this information. >> All right.
41:03
So based on my work with the Amarna tablets and of course my love and work with the Bible, um, I've kind of come up with three final thoughts here about what we've talked about for two episodes. First, that the Amarna letters suggest, uh, evidence for the biblical Ten Plagues and the Israelite Exodus from Egypt. If those two historical events happened when the Bible says they did and it's absolutely the right period in Egyptian history that they happened, then the Amarna letters point to reasons
41:43
why Egypt failed to hold on to its eastern empire. Because of the Ten Plagues and because of the Exodus, they were incapable -- and the Red Sea crossing, the loss of the army -- they were incapable of holding on to their eastern empire, which was such a valuable resource, trade and economically, for Egypt. So, the Amarna tablets give evidence of the Ten Biblical Plagues and the Exodus from Egypt. I would also say that they clearly indicate the decline
42:20
and the collapse of Egypt's Powerful 18th dynasty and the loss of Egypt's Eastern Empire. The 18th dynasty was the strongest we've ever understood in Egypt, and they had the greatest kingdom the world had ever known at that time. And yet it collapsed within less than a hundred years, from its peak to where it was gone. And, Henry, I'll just add a note here. Maybe we could talk about it one day. Tutankhamen's widowed wife actually sends a letter to the king of the Hittites,
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asking for one of his sons to be sent to her. She will marry him and make him the King of Egypt, because she doesn't want to marry a commoner in Egypt. We've actually got records of that letter, and the aftermath of that is absolutely amazing. The decline of the 18th dynasty was thorough, and King Tut was the last royal of the family line. Okay, one more thought. Uh, that finally is that the Amarna letters demonstrate evidence of the conquest and the settlement in the southern part of Egypt's
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former empire, the land of Canaan. I would submit that virtually every reference to Habiru in that region is a reference to the Israelites in the conquest and settlement of that part of the world, of the land of Canaan. And don't forget, the Bible mentions seven nations of Canaan. They were divided. They were not a united group at all. They were Egyptian cities. They were local Canaanite cities under the control of the Egyptians. Everybody fighting among each other.
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It was perfectly set up for Josh and the boys to take over Egypt. To take over Canaan. >> Yeah, really -- >> Okay. >> Yeah. Really remarkable. You want to add to that thought? Did you want to -- Do you have more to add? >> No. That was really -- That, for me, summarizes what I've tried to say over two episodes. >> Excellent. That is an excellent summary. All right. Let's explore a little bit, a couple of thoughts that I have, things that I think that we didn't mention
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that the audience might be interested in. One of them is, after the Israelites take Ai, they go immediately up to Shechem for the covenant renewal ceremony. There's no evidence of any battle in that central area there. They just walk in. Um, and our assumption has been the patriarchal connections to Shechem going all the way back to Abraham. Tell us, what does the Amarna letter say about the King of Shechem during this time? >> Yes. Labayu is clearly seen as one of the major bad guys
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in the Amarna letters, and they continually connect him with the Habiru. And it so ties to what you just described out of the Bible. It's absolutely amazing. And I think that's the key. And as, uh, Scott Stripling will say, um -- Well, we actually believe we excavated -- Scott and Bryant Wood, you, we all -- excavated Khirbet el-Maqatir. We've made -- We've tried to make the case that Khirbet el-Maqatir represents the northern border fortress of the Jerusalem kingdom.
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And, uh, the site just to the north of that, Bethel, modern Beth-aven, represents the fortress for this southern border of the kingdom of Shechem. And Stripling points out that Shiloh, where they're going to put the tabernacle, is in the kingdom of Shechem, under some sort of protection from the kingdom of Shechem. Israelites did need protection from anybody. They had God. But still, um, that's where the tabernacle goes inside the ancient kingdom of Shechem's territory. >> Yeah. It's remarkable.
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Like, they have to go in and fight this battle, but they have this peaceful infiltration with this part of the country. And the Amarna letters indicate that the Shechem king has corroborated with the Habiru. It fits so nicely... >> Amazing. >> ...with the biblical text. Last thing we can talk about is maybe the political structure of Canaan, as it's described in Joshua versus the political structure described in the Amarna letters. Just give us a -- What do you see there?
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>> Yes. Well, lots of -- So the Amarna letters probably give us 25, um, city-states with each one with a king. Um, the word "king" is not the Amarna word, but the word "king" is the biblical word. And it's very true because he controlled the area. But he did have to report to a to a higher authority, and that was Pharaoh. And so the Bible has all these little city-states, uh, fighting with each other, coalitioning with each other. Uh, there's all this chaos in Canaan.
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And the Amarna letters just highlight that incredibly. And it just made it so much easier for the Israelites to move in and take regions of the country, uh, when they marched through. >> Yeah. That list of kings, it's really remarkable. It shows -- I've mentioned this numerous times on our show. It shows the eyewitness nature of the author of Joshua. He's familiar with the political structure of the land. And the theory that Joshua was written centuries later
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is really hard to argue for when you look at the Amarna letters. Well, Gary, believe it or not, the runway has come to an end, so we have to say good-bye. But thank you so much for all the work you put into this. I feel like I was sitting in a classroom for two, uh, two episodes. Thank you so much. Appreciate everything you do, brother. >> Thank you. It's been my joy to share what's exciting to me. See you, my friend. >> All right. Thanks, Gary. Well, friends, thank you for joining us again
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for "Digging for Truth." We hope you've enjoyed these two really thorough programs about the reliability of the Bible, the ancient Near Eastern world in which the events of the Bible take place, and how we see correlations between the biblical text, the archeology, how we can trust the biblical text, and of course, the ultimate thing we're trying to share with you is that the story of the Bible, of God redeeming his people, is the most important part of the message,
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and what is trustworthy and true.
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